


True North

by MilkshakeKate



Series: Soundscapes [3]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Camping, F/M, Fluff, Illya Carries The Bags, Indulgent Garbage, Rain, Scotland, Secret Relationship, Sharing Body Heat, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6985945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Confined to a canvas tent in the Scottish Highlands, a blue-blooded climber and her faithful assistant wait for the storm to pass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True North

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for the lovely Anna, who prompted me to start a soundscape series! Hope this fits the bill! There are many more to come :)
> 
> I wrote to [**this calibration**](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/campingRainNoiseGenerator.php?c=0&l=9163665734183116260600), but it can absolutely be enjoyed on 'animate!' (just press the little button), to your own preferred specs, or without it entirely!

Their tent shivers in the downpour. It’s a bleak Scottish morning, just after dawn, and the Highland wind batters and howls, whistling through the seams and snapping the canvas tight. 

Inside, Gaby listens for the coarse shrieks from the crags; gulls and harriers protesting the weather, their intrusion. But even the birds have resigned to waiting, powerless in this torrential, biting wet.

“Put your back into it." She's keen to hear something deep and low.  

“I should have this,” Illya mutters, kneading. “I carried this tent. You carried, what? Map, flask?”  

He rolls another knot from her shoulders. Gaby hums. 

True. She'd bypassed the heavy lifting to schmooze with their mark, following closely alongside he and his associates for the whole climb. Illya, too proud to complain, had only lugged her supplies behind them in silence. 

But that's not her fault. What else would a personal assistant do for his employer? A lady of blue blood, whose interest in conquering the Scottish Highlands just  _happens_  to coincide with that of an international poacher and weapons dealer on his holiday? The mark projects himself as a vocational hero, thrill-seeker. An outdoorsman, hyper-masculine in his pursuits; hunting, investing, in weapons and women both.

She and this ivory tycoon, this peddler of furs and artillery. He had shown more than enough interest in her at base camp; had, after she’d feigned enough naivety and wealth and flirtation, even invited her personally to join him.   

Illya is still incensed.   

Solo has cunningly escaped this frozen moorland. He’s mingling at a legitimate auction in Inverness. The real auction opens after dusk, by which time he'll have talked his way into an invitation as a merchant of fine art, priceless cultural artefacts. A grave robber, a canvas roller. 

There, the three agents and their mark will finish things cleanly, quietly. Once his trust is earned. Once Gaby becomes an undeniable conquest, and he might follow her willingly to somewhere dark and secluded.  

At least, that’s the plan. There is always a plan. But at no time in history have any points of this particular triangle stayed rightly in their place.  

So Illya — or rather, Nickovetch — her obedient aide, would carry UNCLE funded camping equipment through heather and burr for her; follow her to the peak, where on their way down she’ll hunt red deer with the gloating businessman and have their photographs taken in all their pre-booked, supervised glory. Wide eyed and curious, with her two-metre shadow at her back, she'll accept a ride to the auction and have the tycoon tied and dehorned there, too. Rightly so. He has been handsy. 

An assistant, however bitter, would also ensure that his employer's health maintains good condition. Prepare her camping gas stove, pour her thermos, dry her boots and ration her water.  

Roll into her muscles with a demanded strength that has always worried him.   

That wasn’t part of their _assigned_ cover, per se. But after some theatrical wincing and rolling about in discomfort, he’d given her that sarcastic little glance of his, and complied.  

“Aw,” Gaby says, having won, and muffles her groan into her sleeping bag. “Are you sore? We will have to put you down.”  

“I am not a  _mule_.”  

“You’re an ass.”  

Illya flips her over, pins her. “Be quiet.”  

On her back she gives him a wry smile. His breath forms a white mist.  

She covers the huge hand curved around her arm. Through her wool sweater she hadn't felt the chill of him. He’s as white as ice.  

“Come here.” She scoots along the crackling mat to get comfortable, eventually having to tug him with her. “Come on.”  

Illya slips down to lie flat, jaw clenched.   

She pats his cheek and searches him fondly. “Don’t sulk.”  

Gaby pulls the blanket up to his chin, tucks him in. His eyes roll up to the sagging roof of the tent where the rain patters and beads, and the canvas dips low beneath a puddle he has yet to reach up and push into, have the water roll down in one smooth rush. That’s his job.  

Steadying her palm on the round of his shoulder, half for balance and half to restrain him, Gaby leans up to do it herself. He keeps his eyes on her while she watches the wave cascade down in a heavy sheet, slipping down to the grass outside with a flat splash.  

“This rain won’t slow for a while,” she says, peering down at him. “We should take an hour before moving on.”  

He doesn't say anything, so she shifts back beneath the blanket, unzips his sleeping bag. She ignores his disapproving huff, fishes out his icy hands to tuck them under her arms.  

“You will get cold,” he warns, flexing his fingers at her ribs.  

Gaby squares his body closer, wrangles his thigh to rest between hers and clamps him down. She lowers her voice, barely a whisper under the rain: “How did you survive Russia, if this is too much for you?”  

“Stronger tents.”  

It has always been easy to imagine Illya in fur and wool. Natural. Sipping borscht and hot dark tea, huddling somewhere wooden, flame-yellow, smoke-dry, until the bitter rain gave in. Wrapped up and pink-nosed, those long eyelashes wet and dark.

It is a deathly private joy of hers to know he is not like the rest, that she has not had to soften him to this. It's in him, miraculously kept, despite all the hard hands desperate to snatch it out. In a trench of fifty soldiers, she could seek him out by that singular warmth. Under all that uniform, violence, ideals, she feels for him as if he's true north and she's a magnet in a pail of water; pulling her in, in, in, all the time, whether she likes it or not. 

With forest green tartan pulled up to his chin now, he looks like a Christmas gift.  

Before she can sneak a hand under his sweater to thaw him, become a little greedy, he wraps her up and pulls her in tight.  

“It is not too much for me,” he corrects her. “This cold.”   

Illya’s arms cross around her, and she feels his breath over her hair. He radiates from his chest so she noses into his neckline, and the scent of him waves up. Illya: the slightest hint of plain soap and metal and skin, all that cable knit holding in his costly body heat.

Still, his hands are nipped to the bone, as if he has dunked his arms into a fresh, cold stream. He draws a fingertip down the nape of her neck and she shudders, curls her fist into his sweater, prepared to strangle him if he tries it again.   

“In Russia,” he says, so vigilant she feels it more than she hears it, “it can become so cold it does not rain or snow for weeks. Only wind from the Arctic. Snow does not melt.”  

“Sounds delightful.”  

“You will get used to it.”  

 _When?_  

“I’ll take your word on that,” she murmurs.   

Trailing down her ribs, he slips under the hem of her sweater to press his whole, freezing hand to her skin.  

“Agh!” She jolts in his grip, recoils from his palm. “What was that for?”  

“Now you know what it feels like. There is no need for you to go.”  

“I really, really wasn't planning on it.”  

Leaning into the crook of her neck, he tuts. “You are much warmer than I thought.”  

She flexes her trapped shoulder blades.  

“Come.” As if she has a choice, she allows him to pull her through the opening of his sleeping bag, has her tuck her feet into the ends with his. He pats her hip amiably. “You are like little engine in here.”  

“What do  _you_  know about engines?”  

“Enough.” He guides a palm to his chest, the other to his waist. “At least, I know this one well.”  

He seems to. His breath by her ear is a warming current and he has done this before. She almost retreats, knowing his trick to lull her to sleep before she can toss and turn. A single knuckle smooths down the line of her back, grazes just the barest slip of skin below her sweater.  

She commends his efforts, but this is the last thing to send her back to sleep.  

“We have to get up soon, anyway,” she reminds him. She's only tucked in closer, the zip sealed firmly behind her. “Join the others.”   

The canvas walls are thin, and the rumbling of thunder too distant to muffle any mention of missions, of marks, of assets. Their tent is no more than fifteen feet from the rest. But Gaby had known they would be heard like this, eventually. Inevitable in this closeness. So, she had decided it would be in their best interest to curb suspicion.

Illya has yet to notice the subtle tint she has been applying to their cover. A veneer that suggests their relationship to be superior-subordinate in more ways than one.

Gaby has spent the week dropping clues.

She'd gone about it brutally; snapping her fingers, barking orders. When Illya had thought the mark to be oblivious, and she knew for certain that he was not, she'd still let Illya touch her hands, fix her hair, tighten her laces and have his grip linger around her calf, down on his knees and smiling discreetly at her. It had been enough to confirm it, this odd submission of his. 

There had been guilt, at first. She did not want to share those touches. But for their show, for her efforts, every noise from their tent is only a routine heavy petting, an understanding between the Lady and this fawning Nickovetch. Every gasp expected, no concern. No threat to her mark, who wants her.

If he knew the nature of the brush with which she's been painting him, Illya would be humiliated. Indignant, stubborn, demand a change of his portrayal.

So she has not told him. 

Last night they’d had one doubtful listener outside their tent. A spy of their own.  

She’d sighed into Illya’s palm, gasped out a  _Nickovetch_  — to provoke him, mostly, have him work harder. With it, the crumpling boots over thistle and moss had stalked away. 

"Don't sleep," she whispers. 

“Hmm." It's mutinous. He kisses her instead, once, twice. So right that she forgets to be careful; almost mouths an  _Illya_  into him because it’s something he likes to hear.  

Fingertips push up her sleeve to trace along her arm, goosebumps sensitive and bristling, rising. He's warming up, breath coming a little more keenly. Still, his kiss is soft, tired, lips weather-beaten and chapped for the cold.  _Soft,_ she muses, and dares to peep mid-kiss at his closed eyes and raised brow, usually so furrowed.

She runs the tip of her tongue over him to open him up. Another hum, his lowest yet, and he pulls her up and onto him entirely, runs both hands down her back to settle at the curve.   

She prods his kneecaps with her socked toes, pressing the bruises on his shin from his repetitive, ill-timed kicking of the sled.    

His wince becomes a glare and he pulls her up his body to discourage her. She doesn’t mind that one bit, the slide over him. It's barely an effort at all, like everything else in his path. He makes this feel easy. Light, safe.   

She will wrestle out of his grip if she wants to, and he knows now just when to flinch. They have played this game before.   

Their mark is stable, half-earned, unsuspecting. It can all wait an hour. Two, if the dark weather refuses to relent. Like this, she’ll let him lock her down in this damp, cold tent for a little longer. Because she wants him to, and he's Illya, and he has been so, so good.   

  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! Honestly I could write another 10k on this mission of theirs omg but I am trying... so hard... to reel myself in and publish some short and sweet things for once!! The fics for the rest of the soundscape series will likely be about this length, too! There are a few I've already made a start on, but please feel free to browse the site (and others, if you know of them!) and let me know if there are any you'd love to have a little fic for :')
> 
> also: NICKOVETCH. Illya's Official Other Name. Is it a second surname? A middle name? I've never heard it (like Ilya being spelled with two L's) anywhere else before! Nikovich, maybe? Similarly, Waverly pronounces Kuryakin in about four different ways in the movie!! Hugh... come on, buddy. 
> 
> xxx


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